FM Winter 2025 - Flipbook - Page 4
Interview: Paul Mills
and the emergence of
OneBlueLeaf
The move up to starting an agency from being
a great brand ambassador is an occasional
story in FMBE and is typically seen in brand
experience.
For Paul Mills the emergence from side hustle
to agency of OneBlueLeaf is something that
made sense, with Paul’s background as a BA
has seen him glean experience from agencies
including REL Field Marketing, Wave and
Service Innovation Group.
He also notes his work at the agency
Benchmark Field Marketing as being key to
building his experience in more than just the
CE sector, and exploring the DIY and Garden
business'.
At OneBlueLeaf, he is now joined by Nathan
Tice, Client Director and Richard King
Sae-Heng who is OneBlueLeaf’s Creative
Director.
Interview: Adam
Stanley, MD, EC
discusses Experience
Design
2024 saw the agency fully formalise its offer
while delivering key product-focused sales
ambassadors for brands such as Erbauer and
Skil.
For Erbauer, OneBlueLeaf has provided teams
for events in-store at Screwfix and B&Q, and
with the next generation of Erbauer launching
shortly in B&Q, OneBlueLeaf will be out
demonstrating and training across the B&Q
Estate.
For Skil, the brand launched into Screwfix with
the agency’s support training over 1000 staff,
providing on-site demonstrations, and
hands-on experience of the tools to the staff
and customers.
When talking to Paul, in December,
OneBlueLeaf had a field team of 36 including
12 Skil branded experts.
2025 is seen as a year of growth for the agency
with expansion into the consumer electronics
sector high on the list for Mills.
Design or more specifically ‘Experience Design’
is the term used by EC that sits at the core of
EC’s developing capabilities.
Adam ran me through the 4 principles that he –
and EC – believe help the agency to deliver
tangible value through experiences that
influence memory and behaviour change– his
Experience Design Principles. These principles
are underpinned by behavioural science.
My interpretation of EC’s four
Experience Design pillars.
As we have seen with the strong B2B/B2E
category at FMBE Awards, there has been a
shift in terms of depth of engagement across
conferences and team development events.
Pillar 1, Holistic Impact is about crafting an
end-to-end experience where individual
details beautifully executed create a halo
effect, enhancing the overall perception of
both the event and the brand delivering it.
Effectively an impact greater than the sum of
its parts.
2
Winter 2025
Paul Mills
The team is using Teamhaven as a planning
and delivery tool.
I took up a recent chance to interview Adam
Stanley, MD of EC (Event Concept). EC is an
agency that has been redefining itself as its
core capabilities in event strategy, design and
production broaden.
For Adam, now 3 years in to taking up the reins
as MD, one of the biggest changes in recent
years has seen an increase in his agency’s
influence over the success of any given event.
Where once event agencies were required to
deliver the event flawlessly, now they are
helping to ensure that engagement is
maximised and real measurable value
delivered. Adam comments: “Over the last 5
years we’ve grown and evolved to take on a
lot more of the upstream creative strategy
for clients which informs the resulting event
design” he says, adding that in tandem with
that EC has enlarged as a business nationally
whilst also expanding globally.
It will definitely be interesting to see how
OneBlueLeaf develops in the year ahead.
Pillar 2, Curated Exclusivity, I see as the FOMO
moments. Driving demand using a star
performer or guest speaker, unique learning
opportunities or wanting to share in an event
with noteworthy attendees.
Pillar 3, Participatory Design, encourages
active user involvement - getting guests hands
on and active rather than passive. So, it might
include co-creation opportunities or workshop
style content through to simply offering
participants an element of agency through
choices in their event timetable.
Pillar 4, Scale the Peaks, is, for me, a great
principle to keep in mind when pacing an
event day to sustain attention and finish with a
highly memorable moment (The Peak End
Rule). Driven by storytelling and clever
programmatic planning, it ensures the content
works to deliver dynamic moments and
moments of respite, to build core memory
structures. A high point earlier in the
programme may be best remembered if you
give everyone a break following it, or a ‘palette
cleanser’, before building to the next peak.
Of course, there’s more depth behind each of
these Experience Design pillars than my quick
assessment of them, but it is certainly good to
see behavioural science being used in the
strategic design of conferences and brand-led
experiences. Too many of us have sat,
disengaged in content-rammed symposia,
and I certainly felt persuaded by EC’s methods.
We are planning to hear more from Adam and
EC in the year ahead at fieldmarketing.com
Adam Stanley
